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Hisar: In a unique achievement, Dr. Inderjeet Singh,Director, ICAR-Central Institute for Research on Buffaloes (CIRB) informed that institute scientists produced cloned calf ‘HISAR GOURAV’ on December 11, 2015 at 11:30 AM, birth weight of 40.4 kg born through normal delivery.

This cloned buffalo calf is distinct from the earlier clones produced in India, as this is produced from cells of ventral side of tail of superior buffalo bull, this part is least exposed to sunlight and may have less mutation rate, and can be good choice for isolation of donor cells to produce healthy clones. The newborn cloned calf is maintaining good health and showing normal activities. Dr Singh emphasized that the use of adult somatic cells of proven males or quality females for cloning can bring revolution by multiplying the superior buffalo germplasm in country. With this achievement CIRB becomes world’s third and India’s second institute to produce cloned buffalo. This achievement has been made under the project entitled, Cloning for conservation and multiplication of superior buffalo germplasm.

The team of scientists lead by Dr Prem Singh Yadav includes Dr. N.L. Selokar, Dr. R.K. Sharma, Dr. Dharmendra Kumar and Dr. Sudhir Khanna. Dr. Yadav informed that objective of this project is to clone of superior males and females and this calf is the clone of Superior Murrah bull (Mu-435). This bull is currently used for semen production at CIRB, Hisar, produced 35691 doses of semen out of which 15402 were sold, 5840 were disseminated and 14335 are in stock. The semen from this bull is in great demand and its AI conception rate is about 53%. Acknowledging the progress at CIRB, Science and Engineering Reasearch Board under ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India have last month granted of Rs 25 lakhs to Dr Naresh Selokar to simplify this techniquefor improving its effeciency unde the Young Scientist Scheme. Cloning of superior animals could go a long way to multiply best breeding buffalo bulls in India. At present limited amount of semen is avilable from progeny tested bulls for future use in artificial insemination programs, which is grossly insufficient to meet the demands of the nation. In addition, approximately 2500 young bulls are required every year to cover the 60 millon breedable buffalo population. Animal cloning can be one of the option for multiplication of such bulls in shortest possible time.